On The Subject Of 16 Year Olds! Does yours have a curfew?

Oldernotwiser

Errata wrote: »

Before my time, couldn't possibly comment

Mine too, but my parents talked to me about their lives.

looby75

StrawberryYogurt wrote: »

Thank you!

Well tonight after a chat we have "let her go" :eek: We had a chat with her, I guess we gave her the "drill" lol and have said her best friend can sleep here tonight as they will be coming back together. We also explained the reason we were "Backing off" is because the last few months she has seemed to really of grown up and all the time she is being so mature, we will treat her as such. We did say though that she can call AT ANY time if she needs one of us to go get her if anything upsetting happens....NOT as a free taxi! LOL

Ok so now I wait! Its going to be a long night! lol

Thank you all x

Sounds like the perfect approach to me :T

it will be a long night but it doesn't matter if the first time she it happens is when she is 16 or 18 or even 21 (yep I know someone who still had a curfew at that age :eek:) from what you have posted though I doubt that she will take the mickey and stay out until 3am Trust does really does go a long way with older teens IME.

Please let us all know how it goes tonight and if you start getting stressed, get back here we'll all sort you out

Ladyhawk

StrawberryYogurt wrote: »

Do you also think that if you had of had more leeway then going out would not of been a "forbidden fruit", no need to exploit as it was always there next weekend to kinda thing? I am genuinely interested.

It wasn't really forbidden fruit as my closest friends only really went out one night a week too. And my parents were definitely more liberal than some of the girls parents that I went to school with. I just loved drinking and being part of a scene. I met my boyfriend 6 weeks after leaving school and within 6 months I had given up alchohol and settled down to study properly.

pigpen

school nights mine has to be home by 7.. unless she is getting a lift with a friends parent or we are collecting her weekends it is about 9.. but mine isn't 16 until July and has school..

shazrobo

my mum had house rules, and until i left home at 24, i had to be back at midnight, mum said that was late enough as dad had to be up early and i accepted it.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Mine (17) has now decided that she is a grown up now and can come as go as she pleases. And will leave home if I ground her.

Now, I wouldn't ground her, so where that comes from is beyond me - perhaps she's a clone and the real DD1 is hidden in a pod somewhere? - but when I have asked her to be in, I don't expect her to be 4 hours late and spending another 2 hours kissing the BF on the doorstep. And she's decided that college is optional when there's a boyfriend to manipulate to hang around in town with her (like he doesn't need an education, either)

So, no money, no washing and no food unless she's here by the requested time.

Can't do anything else because she's already told her college tutor that she's frightened of violence at home (!!!!!!? S*d that attachment parenting carp, they just throw it in your face and pretend you've practically battered them, just to get their own way. If I had ever hit her, it wouldn't have been quite so offensive, tbh, but NEVER). But these child protection reps in the colleges don't quite realise how modern kids know exactly what to say to push their buttons - it's on the TV every day, after all.

If she manages to not get kicked out of college, it's only 18 months until Uni (fingers crossed). If she does get kicked out, as I lose all benefits for her, she'll just have to manage on nothing. Or scrounge off the BF's parents, or her father's (Wait! That's soooo funny! Get something from her father :rofl)

A curfew would be so pointless, as she'd deliberately overrun it, just to provoke a confrontation. What else can I do? No interest in being manipulated any more. So no interest in cooking and cleaning for her.

If they have nowhere else to go, all I can suggest is no extras - like catering, cleaning or funding. IF they're so grown up, they'll manage.

StrawberryYogurt

Thank you all for all your input x

diddyangel

StrawberryYogurt wrote: »

Thank you all for all your input x

Is she home yet?

tandraig

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

Mine (17) has now decided that she is a grown up now and can come as go as she pleases. And will leave home if I ground her.

Now, I wouldn't ground her, so where that comes from is beyond me - perhaps she's a clone and the real DD1 is hidden in a pod somewhere? - but when I have asked her to be in, I don't expect her to be 4 hours late and spending another 2 hours kissing the BF on the doorstep. And she's decided that college is optional when there's a boyfriend to manipulate to hang around in town with her (like he doesn't need an education, either)

So, no money, no washing and no food unless she's here by the requested time.

Can't do anything else because she's already told her college tutor that she's frightened of violence at home (!!!!!!? S*d that attachment parenting carp, they just throw it in your face and pretend you've practically battered them, just to get their own way. If I had ever hit her, it wouldn't have been quite so offensive, tbh, but NEVER). But these child protection reps in the colleges don't quite realise how modern kids know exactly what to say to push their buttons - it's on the TV every day, after all.

If she manages to not get kicked out of college, it's only 18 months until Uni (fingers crossed). If she does get kicked out, as I lose all benefits for her, she'll just have to manage on nothing. Or scrounge off the BF's parents, or her father's (Wait! That's soooo funny! Get something from her father :rofl)

A curfew would be so pointless, as she'd deliberately overrun it, just to provoke a confrontation. What else can I do? No interest in being manipulated any more. So no interest in cooking and cleaning for her.

If they have nowhere else to go, all I can suggest is no extras - like catering, cleaning or funding. IF they're so grown up, they'll manage.

Jojo - you obviously realise she is manipulating you! call her bluff hun!
personaly, I would look for a nice grotty little bedsit and arrange to take her around for a looksee - on the grounds that she is a grown-up and doesnt want to live by my rules and wouldnt she prefer to be independent? oh and you arent going to be the local laundry or dropin fast food place - and she will be paying for it! you know how to play it - be ever so nice - and extoll the virtues of the dump you choose! and your trump card? well thats the one that says she wont have to be afraid of domestic violence!
the little !!!!!!! after all you have been through! (yes i have read some of your previous posts and think i got a bit of an insight in your early life).
dont let her do this to you Jojo. you dont deserve it!

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Thanks Tandraig - seeing as she hasn't even managed to get her own provisional driving license or passport applications, (as I CBA to go to the Post Office for her, telling her nicely, 'well, I can't apply for them as you're not a child any more' ), the odds on her actually managing to move out are fairly low.

Her father certainly never managed it, he still lives with Mummy and Daddy (and the wife and the 2 kids - nothing like providing for your own, is there?), so her doing it? Nah.

If the college are convinced that Bunnikins [do I sound sarcastic? ] needs 'safe' accommodation, they can go about sorting it out a room in a hostel/shared house for her. I suspect that one look at a place filled with cockroaches, junkies and prostitutes will send her scuttling back. If not, she might grow up a bit. [fingers crossed for either of those outcomes]

Oh well. She had to become a PITA at some point. Pity, but it's part of the territory.

Of course, if she changes her mind, after all that's happened, I would naturally welcome her back. It's horrible to realise you're in a hole with no way out/nobody to turn to and I wouldn't want to abandon her like that.

It seems like she is deliberately trying to push me away, to see whether I will snap. But I didn't wallop her when she was little, so I'm certainly not going to do it now.

I will keep telling myself in the meantime that this too, shall pass...

[Although I do say to myself, quite frequently, that maybe I should have got dogs instead]